MINNEAPOLIS, May 2, 2019 /CNW/ --Nuvaira, developer of novel therapeutic strategies to treat obstructive lung diseases, has received acceptance from the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS, the French health technology assessment agency) into its Forfait Innovation program. The program is designed to fast-track novel medical devices with significant potential to improve clinical outcomes, with the objective of expediting access to important new therapies.

The Forfait Innovation is a unique program which finances national access to breakthrough innovative therapies during continued collection of clinical and/or health economic data to allow the HAS to fully evaluate the therapy's performance and clinical value. Strict program requirements include novelty, pre-commercial status, demonstrated safety, and clinical potential to satisfy an unmet medical need. The program also requires a robust, prospective clinical trial designed to confirm safety and efficacy in a well-characterized patient population. Nuvaira's AIRFLOW-3 randomized, sham-controlled double-blinded pivotal trial (NCT03639051) is the first interventional COPD study to target a reduction in COPD exacerbations as a primary endpoint.

In February, Nuvaira, working with reimbursement consultancy MediTech Access and key opinion leaders from University Medical Centers in Grenoble and Reims, submitted a dossier of pre-clinical and clinical data, including one-year outcomes from its randomized sham-controlled AIRFLOW-2 trial. HAS considers that AIRFLOW-3 can provide adequate confirmatory evidence of TLD safety and efficacy. Under the Forfait Innovation program, costs for the French patients enrolled in AIRFLOW-3 at eight university medical centers across France, including costs of the TLD catheters, will be reimbursed. Centers may continue treating patients with TLD therapy after the completion of trial enrollment, with continued reimbursement, until results of the AIRFLOW-3 trial are available.

"We are thrilled that our AIRFLOW-2 trial outcomes have resulted in reimbursement under this novel program," said Dennis Wahr, M.D., chief executive officer at Nuvaira. "We anticipate that results from our AIRFLOW-3 trial will allow us to transition into permanent, national reimbursement."

"Vagal nerve input to the lung is a significant contributor to symptoms and exacerbations in COPD patients," said Bruno Degano, MD, Ph.D., director of pulmonary medicine at CHU Grenoble. "University Hospital Grenoble is pleased to lead our country's education and recruitment efforts in AIRFLOW-3."

About NuvairaNuvaira is a privately held company headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. The company's proprietary dNerva® Lung Denervation System addresses airway hyper-responsiveness, a pathophysiologic underpinning of both COPD and asthma, in a procedure called Targeted Lung Denervation (TLD). Nuvaira has three completed clinical studies: IPS-I/II, AIRFLOW-1, and most recently, the AIRFLOW-2 randomized, sham-controlled double-blind clinical trial.

The dNerva® lung denervation system is CE Mark approved. The dNerva® lung denervation system is under clinical investigation and is not commercially available in the USA . Nuvaira and dNerva are registered trademarks of Nuvaira, Inc. Please visit www.Nuvaira.com.